The New Nation

by Frederic L. Paxson

In the North agriculture was depressed and the farmers were discontented. In many regions the farms were worn out. Scientific farming was beginning to be talked about to some extent, but was little practiced. The improvements in transportation had brought the younger and more fertile lands of the West into competition with the East for the city markets. Cattle, raised on the plains and slaughtered at Kansas City or Chicago, were offered for sale in New York and Philadelphia. Western fruits of superior quality were competing with the common varieties of the Eastern orchards. Here, as in the South, the farmers saw the parties quarreling over issues that touched the manufacturing classes, but disregarding those of agriculture.

It was in the West, however, that agricultural discontent was keenest. In no other region were uniform conditions to be found over so large an area. The Granger States had shown how uniformity in discontent may bring forth political readjustments. The new region of the late eighties lay west of Missouri and Iowa, where the railroads had stimulated settlement along the farther edge of the arable prairies. Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and the Dakotas had passed into a boom period about 1885, and had pushed new farms into regions that could not in ordinary years produce a crop. Only blinded enthusiasts believed that the climate of the sub-humid plains was changing. In good years crops will grow as far west as the Rockies: in bad, they dry up in eastern Kansas.

It served the interest of the railroads to promote new settlements, and speculation got the better of prudence. The rainfall coöperated for a few years, enabling the newcomers to break the sod and set up their dwellings and barns. The quality of the settlers increased the dangers attendant upon the community.

Under earlier conditions in the westward migration each frontier had been settled, chiefly, by occupants of the preceding frontier, who knew the climate and understood the conditions of successful farming. The greater distances in the farther West, and the ease of access which the railroads gave, brought a less capable class of farmers into the plains settlements. Some were amateurs; others knew a different type of agriculture. The population which had to deal with this new region was less likely to succeed than that of any previous frontier.

The frontier of the eighties presented new obstacles in its doubtful rainfall and its experimental farmers. It contained as well the conditions that had always prevailed along the edge of settlement. Transportation was vital to its life,—as vital as it had been in the Granger States,—yet was nearly as unregulated. The Interstate Commerce Law of 1887 had little noticeable immediate effect. Discrimination, unreasonable rates, and overcapitalization were still grievances that affected the West. The new activity of organized labor, shown in the Western strikes of 1885 and 1886, added another obstacle to the easy prosperity of farmers who needed uninterrupted train service. The germs of an anti-railroad movement were well distributed.

An anti-corporation movement, too, might reasonably be expected in this new frontier. Producing only the raw products of agriculture, its inhabitants bought most of the commodities in use from distant sections. They were impressed with the cost of what they had to buy and the low price of what they sold. They were ready listeners to agitators against the trusts.

Like all frontiers, this one was financed on borrowed money. The pioneer was dependent on credit, was hopeful and speculative in his borrowings, built more towns and railroads than he needed, and loaded himself with a mountain of debt that could be met only after a long series of prosperous years.

By necessity he was readily converted by the arguments of inflation. Greenback inflation had run its course, and after the resumption of specie payments in 1879 had been only a political threat without foundation or many followers. A Greenback party, affiliating with labor and anti-monopoly interests, had nominated Weaver in 1880 and Butler in 1884, but even inflationists had not voted for the ticket in large number. A new phase of inflation had become more interesting than the greenbacks, and had led to the demand for the free coinage of silver.

Among the demands of the Western farmer, whose greatest problem was the payment of his debts, none was more often heard than that for more and cheaper money. The Eastern farmer, though less burdened with debt, knew that more money would make higher prices, and believed it would bring larger profits. The Southern farmer, heavily in debt, not so much for purposes of development and permanent improvements, as because he regularly mortgaged his crop in advance and allowed the rural storekeeper to finance him, was also interested in inflation as a common remedy. Together the farmers of all sections kept pressing on the parties for free silver after the passage of the Bland-Allison Bill in 1878. As the price of silver declined the gain which silver inflation would bring them increased, and they were joined by another class of producers whose profits came from mining the silver bullion.

The silver mines furnished important industries in Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California, and were highly valued in most of the Western communities. As their output declined in value after 1873, their owners turned to the United States Government for aid and protection, not differing much from the manufacturers of the East in their hope for aid. The restoration of silver coinage was the method by which they desired their protection, and they asserted that Congress could coin all the silver and yet maintain it at a parity with gold. They were allies with the farmer inflationists so far as means of relief were concerned, and both failed to see how incompatible were their real aims. The miners wanted free silver in order to increase the price of silver and their profits; the farmers wanted it to increase the volume of money and reduce its value. If either was correct in his prophecy as to the result of free coinage, the other was doomed to disappointment. But the combined demand was reiterated through the eighties. While times were good it was not serious, but any shock to the prosperity or credit of the West was likely to stimulate the one movement in which all the discontented concurred.